Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a robot for operating at least one driving control, namely a gear shift lever, of a motor vehicle.
Some testing of motor vehicles requires a control or controls of the vehicle to be repeatedly operated in a predetermined sequence, which generally is intended to simulate driving of a vehicle possibly for an extended time or distance. Testing for performance and/or durability might involve the setting up of a vehicle on a chassis dynamometer of "rolling road" type, and then simulating driving of the vehicle by performing a predetermined sequence of operations of the accelerator, brake, clutch and gear shift lever (in the case of a vehicle having manually-shifted gearbox). There have been various proposals for robot devices whereby the operation of the aforementioned driving controls of a vehicle can be caused to take place in a predetermined sequence, thereby eliminating the need for a person to be in attendance to operate the controls.